After a few days, Zoe has finally started to warm up to me and Chris. She’s in love with Samson. She also loves Leo, but Leo has whacked her a couple of times and though his claws are trimmed, it scares her, yet she still keeps loving him and trying to get close.

We finally let the dogs start getting closer to the cats. We thought it would be more of a cat fight in the house with the other two cats already living here, but it appears it was the dogs that were the problem. Samson wandered the whole house today and Leo came out if the dogs were outside. All four cats seem to be getting along and Leo and Red touched noses. I think things will slowly come together if we can just keep the dogs from chasing the cats.

Like I said, Zoe loves Samson. She pets him and kisses him and he’s a good distraction when a meltdown is coming on.

Zoe is pretty much a little kid already. Her vocabulary is getting bigger and she’ll say a word not quite perfect but you understand it after a few seconds thinking about it.

She’s pretty much a stinker.

And she passes out in the weirdest places.

We went up to the NICU yesterday so we could meet Ashleigh. You have to spend three minutes scrubbing your hands and arms and then only two people at a time are allowed back in the room so my brother took Chris and I separately back to the room. You think you can grasp how small she is in a photo, but you can’t. She is tiny. Her diaper reminds me of the dolly diapers you get at the toy store.

The nurse was nice enough to open the incubator for a minute so I could get some better photos of her. She opened her eyes a bit for me. Who knows what she can and cannot see; her eyes are still developing. She’s still covered in little hairs all over her body.

She even yawned for me! She had been gaining weight but has lost a few ounces in the past couple of days but I think she’s on the upswing again for gaining weight. I’ll go again next week to see her.

Chris and I did a video of our gear but YouTube is slow to upload. Also we have started doing some training hikes. Today we did about 4.5 miles at a nearby lake that had some good hills and rocks, but we ran into a deep water crossing since the lake is high and we decided to turn around. Tomorrow we’ll take our packs and try an 8 mile round trip hike. Then we’re heading over to his side in Dallas for the weekend. We’re also hoping to get a Tex-Mex fix very, very soon.